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Seven Reasons Why SyncraTec Recommends the SonicWall TZ 210 Firewall

Security and data protection are two facets of our “Starter Server” and “Growth Server” computer network solution offerings where compromise is not an option.  Most of our clients are price-sensitive to a degree, but not so much that they’d be willing to cut corners when it comes to security.

 
After researching many of the available firewall devices on the market today, we have concluded that the SonicWall TZ 210 comprehensive firewall device offers the most bang for the buck.  It has many of the capabilities that sophisticated small businesses need and is suitable even if e-commerce or locally-published web applications are primary concerns. 

1. Wired and Wireless.  The TZ 210 has both wired and wireless capabilities
2. Active/Passive Failover.  Active/passive failover in case of hardware or software failure.
3. VPN.  Can deliver a VPN solution to meet all of the needs of a business of ten users or more and can scale to thousands of end points.  While securing your traffic through the VPN connection it also decontaminates the traffic running over it because it is checked in real-time. 
4. Multiple ports for WAN and LAN networks.  The TZ 210 can easily handle traffic for the LAN, WAN and if needed a DMZ all in one appliance.  It can also deliver a wireless signal using 802.11 N on any subnet needed.  We regularly deploy this device on a network with a Windows Small Business Server delivering DNS to the network while the SonicWall TZ 210 delivers a separate wireless signal on a different subnet for guests on the network. The guests are able to take advantage of a fast wireless Internet access while the business network remains private.  The addresses for the wireless network are given to the client by the DHCP capabilities of the firewall.
5. Services.  Along with traditional firewall functionality, Sonicwall offers a wide range of security services provided through the TZ 210 such as Anti-Malware, Content Filtering, Intrusion Prevention, Anti-Spam, and Application Intelligence.   The services are available on an annual subscription basis either separately or bundled.
6. Gigabit Speed.  Did I mention that the SonicWall TZ 210 does all of this using Gigabit connectivity?
7. Reasonable Price.  The whole package including the first year’s subscription to the bundled services costs under a thousand dollars.  

That's why we believe this device is truly the answer for small business network security.

Create Shadow Copies on Redirected Folders for Even More Protection

In Windows Small Business Server 2008, one of the things I like most is "My Documents Redirection," a.k.a., Offline Files.

For an excellent description of how Offline Files work, refer to this blog post.  In general, everything that you save to "My Documents" is sync'd to the server.  Every time you log on and log off, all your "My Documents" documents syncs.  You take your documents with you on your laptop.  Everytime you connect to your Windows Small Business Server network, you sync all the documents from My Documents back to the server.

The way your laptop or desktop looks at these documents, is that the location is a "Shared" location on your server.  So, if your server is called SBS, then your share location might be \\SBS\Users\FolderRedirction\actual-folder-name - good right?  Yea, because your F:\ drive on your SBS has RAID 5 redundancy, all your data is centrally located, and backed up nightly.

Only one thing to watch out for: you've heard of "Previous Versions."  With Previoius Versions, if you malign a file you've been working on -- and then save it.  You open it and realized you've lost all today's work, and more, because you don't even have a previous version of the file to revert back to.  Because you copied it to your My DOcuments with the same name.  (SharePoint couldn't helped out with this and Previous Versions, but that's a different blog post.)

Anyway, this is where "Previous Versions" could help.  You set your Windows 7 machine to keep Previous Versions when you turn on System Protection, at the Volume level.

The only problem is, as you recall, my documents are not seen as being on the C:\ drive, they're seen as being on the share \\SBS\Users\FolderRedirection...

So here's what I'm going to do: enable shadow copies of files on Shared Folders on the F:\ drive of the Small Business Server machine (where the My Documents redirection Share is located). 

 

Now I've got Shadow Copies that will provide point-in-time copies that users can use to view shared files and folders as they existed at points of time in the past. Accessing previous versions of files, or shadow copies, is useful because users can:

• Recover files that were accidentally deleted. If you accidentally delete a file, you can open a previous version and copy it to a safe location.
  
• Recover from accidentally overwriting a file. If you accidentally overwrite a file, you can recover a previous version of the file.
  
• Compare versions of a file while working. You can use previous versions when you want to check what has changed between two versions of a file.

 

  

Are You At Risk of Losing All of Your E-mail and Contacts?

In recent days, two people have relayed to me how they lost years and years worth of e-mails and contact information.  Are you at risk of this happening to you?  If you're certain that your data is not at risk, are you certain about your employees' data as well?  Some companies have not yet consolidated their employees' contact data into a shared, centralized database; and so that valuable information could be here today and gone tomorrow.

Here's a couple scenarios that could result in complete loss of your e-mail history and contact data:

1. Let's say you have some sort of webmail e-mail account, like comcast.net, verizon.net, yahoo, gmail, hotmail, AOL, etc.  When you have a webmail account, you have a couple of options to consider in how you manage your e-mail and contacts.  You can leave all of your e-mail on the web server and work exclusively online within the webmail program that your host provides, or you could download the e-mail into an e-mail client software like the full version of Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Entourage, Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird, etc.  When you download e-mail from a webmail host to an e-mail client, the process by which this is done is referred to as POP3 e-mail.  (An important factor to consider when down-loading POP3 e-mail is whether to leave a copy of the e-mails on your host webmail server.)  Let's say you opt not to keep a copy of your e-mail on the host webmail server.  Now then, let's say you've done it this way for years and years.  If you've been working on the same laptop or desktop for any extended period of time, you've accumulated a lot of historical e-mails, that you may want to keep for reference.  Also, most e-mail clients give you a convenient place to store your contacts.  Now here's the thing, if your laptop or desktop crashes, and you're not backing up your e-mail and contact data, then you're at risk of losing a lot of valuable information at any given moment.
2. Another way you can lose all your e-mail and contact data is if you're working exclusively on the webmail client, and counting on the reliability of a comcast or verizon to safeguard your data.  Do you think comcast and verizon offers the typical consumer, or even the business consumer, any kind of data protection guarantee?  If so, I'd be interested to hear about it.  And some people may be shocked to learn that the big boys do indeed, make their fair share of mistakes when it comes to shutting down accounts or the like.  It's happend to me with Verizon Business FiOS where I had a business internet service account, and a separate residential FiOS television account.  I cancelled my FiOS TV service, and even though I had separate accounts, and was paying for business class service on the internet service, they shut that service down as well, and my business-critical network addresses were flushed away with the flick of a button.  Moral of the story is: don't rely on your internet service provider, or webmail host to permanently secure your e-mail and contact information, unless you have a 100% data protection guarantee from them.

So, how then, do you make sure you don't lose this kind of data?  Well, you need to do a couple things: first I would recommend downloading the information to your local laptop or desktop; secondly, you simply need to make sure this critical data -- like any other critical data stored locally on your laptop or desktop -- is backed up. 

Another way that small-and medium-sized businesses are using to make sure their e-mail and contacts information is protected, is to synchronize the data with an e-mail server, like Microsoft Exchange.  When you sync up your e-mail client with Exchange, you have a local copy, and you also have everything stored centrally on the server (which should, of course, be backed up as well).  An added advantage of the Exchange server is that it allows you to pull all of your e-mail, contacts, and calendar information into the full Outlook client from any of your laptops or desktop computers.  You would also be able to access all of the same information via webmail if you didn't have access to your personal computer.

The good news is that connecting to an Exchange server isn't just for corporations with large I.T. departments any more.  You can connect to a hosted Exchange server account, with a 100% data protection guarantee, and a 99.999% data reliability guarantee, for as little as $11.95 per user per month.  It's such a good deal that even companies that can afford to install, configure, and maintain their own e-mail servers are choosing to outsource this service. 

Please contact us with any questions you may have about your current e-mail situation.  We can help you assess your current backup strategy, get set up with domain name e-mail, deploy a server network with or without an on-premise Exchange server, or discuss the pros and cons of connecting to a hosted Exchange server.

What is a Smart Host?

No, it's not a party where the host has a high IQ.

A smart host is a type of service where your incoming e-mails are routed (relayed) through an intermediate e-mail server rather than directly to your e-mail server.

Why would you want a smart host (e-mail relay server)? 

Consider the case when you have to take your Exchange server off-line for periodic maintenance, or when the server is down for any other reason (unscheduled outage).  What do you think happens to e-mails that are sent to your e-mail server when your server is offline?  The first thing that might happen -- and a lot of this depends on the sender's system -- is that the sender of the e-mail will get notification back that the delivery of their e-mail to you has been delayed.  Most Microsfot Exchange e-mail servers are configured to re-send e-mails a number of times over a 48-72 hour period in an attempt to get the e-mail to go through successfully.  Some systems do not try and re-send; and some systems may not give you a notification that the e-mail did not go through.

In order to give you peace of mind that you'll not lose incoming e-mails if your server is down for any reason, you'll want to consider signing up for a smart host service.  What the smart host does in normal operation is simply allow your e-mails to be first routed through their server, before forwarding them on to your e-mail server.  If your e-mail server is down for any reason, then the e-mails are queued up on their server until your e-mail server is back online.  Some services will also add extra spam detection to boot.

Ask SyncraTec is this is something you think you might need.  We'd be happy to discuss the finer points, and help you get it configured properly, if it something that makes sense.

Six Enterprise Class Computer Technology Solutions for Small Businesses

Not too long ago, as a panelist on the Mercer Chamber “Cloud Computing” Business Technology Forum, I was asked by an audience member what one thing could small businesses do – with respect to computer technology – that would result in the single, most dramatic improvement to their company’s bottom line.  Certainly, a thought-provoking question that immediately led me to answer, wrongly, that a typical small business could dramatically improve its communications effectiveness by simply getting their e-mail inboxes connected to a hosted Exchange server.  While, on the surface, this response could prove out to be accurate in certain situations, a more fundamental opportunity was lost, and I continue to rue the disservice my lack of insight showed to our audience members. 

Every small business owner faces a multitude of entrepreneurial challenges in the course of their daily work: sales, marketing, delivery of goods or services, insurance, payroll, taxes, etc.  And business owners are typically smart people, that like to feel in control of their destiny, and they could be anywhere on the map in terms of their knowledge and comfort-level in driving decisions related to their business computing environment.  They could be former CIO’s as likely as they could be accountants, chefs, designers, or engineers. 

Thus, any question where a business owner is grappling in what may (or may not) be unfamiliar “business computing technology” territory requires a consultative approach to uncover the multiple layers of the specific needs of the individual’s business environment.  So, it being the first week of January, I’m making a new year’s resolution to – first and foremost – understand any potential business prospect’s needs before recommending any particular course of action.

My new pat answer to any such “silver-bullet” question will be along the lines of: “let’s take a look at what you have now, and what your needs are.”  That being said, there are a few things that I can review in 5-10 minutes, here, that I hope might start your wheels turning along the lines of, “Oh, I didn’t know that kind of thing was available for small businesses, I thought that was only available for bigger-budget, corporate computing environments.”  I’ll offer now one business tool and six separate low-priced / high-impact computer technology capabilities that – given the appropriate situation – could offer small businesses dramatically improved employee productivity and greatly reduced risk of data loss.

So, I mentioned in the opening my new year’s resolution to not jumping in with both feet to offer solutions without first understanding the needs of the small business.  Honoring this commitment, I’d like to suggest to those with questions about business / computing technology to not go it alone.  Reach out SyncraTec or to other fellow chamber member businesses that would be happy to sit down with you, and review your current situation.   Your typical computer consultant, myself included, may have been born with an engineering mentality where we’re ready to start solving problems right away.  The technology assessment process puts the brakes on solving the problem until we understand exactly which problem, or problems, are having the greatest adverse effect on your business.

Our business technology assessment will address the following topics:

· Business Demographics

o   How long have you been in business?

o   Organizational structure?

o   How many locations?

o   How many employees?

o   Annual sales?

· Current Information Technology Landscape

o   Existing computer network?

o   How is the computer network used with respect to the business processes in your company?

· Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis

o   Where would you like to see your business in three to five years?

o   What obstacles have to be overcome to achieve those goals?

· Primary Pain Points

o   What are the three largest pain points in your business?

o   What frustrates you the most regarding technology?

o   What technology features or functions get you excited?

· Regulatory Compliance

o   What regulatory or compliance issues do you face regarding your industry?

Again, this is just a sample of the questions we’ll ask to get the conversation started.

The review will typically last approximately two hours, and should be just enough to get an idea of what if any technology areas are primary concerns, to the point of limiting productivity, holding back growth, or representing unnecessary risk.  Often times, we visibly see signs of relief when business owners can share their pains, hear about potential solutions, and begin to envision a technology environment that will provide peace of mind.  Such confidence will come about when you have systems that you know are efficient, organized, accessible, secure, and reliable.  You’ll hopefully find the productivity boost that will help you get over the next hurdle; experience less frustration from trying to keep your software up-to-date, secure, and synchronized; and enjoy a better quality-of-life that comes about when you’re spending much less time on your computers and more time doing what you’re passionate about.

At some point today, though, you’ll likely want to know what products and services you can get that will offer you that elusive peace of mind.  I’ll take the case of a small business with anywhere from two to ten employees; keeping in mind that these solutions could easily scale to companies with ten to fifty users.  Let’s say the business has a central location, with several employees working in the office, (and possibly subcontractors) working remotely (from home, say), roving geographically, or all of the above.  What are the possibilities, you ask, of a small business this size of getting what I like to call “enterprise class information technology?”  Actually, I think you will be very surprised, especially when you combine: “enterprise class information technology” with a “small-business budget.”  So, I’m going to tell you what kind of essential functionality is available for small businesses, and how to go about getting it. 

If you have a small business that has its sights set on growing; then, at some point, I’m almost always going to mention the possibility of installing an on-premise server at the company’s home office.  A server benefits a growing small business in many ways.  First-and-foremost, a server is a reliable data storage platform for all of the documents you need on an everyday basis.  The server can have redundant hard drives and redundant power supplies.  A server can allow for the creation of a network or computer domain wherein access to data is controlled based on the user’s access privileges.  A server allows for sharing of resources such as the hard drives on the server computer itself, printers, scanners, faxes, and internet connections.  One very powerful thing to know about servers is that they enable you to store all of your data in a shared, centralized location; which can easily be backed up.

Also, when you’re working in a networked computing environment, you can have all of your documents saved to the server whenever you’re online, so if your PC crashes, you don’t lose any data.  Programs can typically be re-installed, but you don’t want to lose data.  If your computer does crash, imagine the convenience of firing up any other computer on your network, logging in as yourself, and having the system recognize you, your “desktop,” your documents, and your “Inbox” (your e-mail, contacts, calendar, and tasks).  Servers also provide for more efficient access to the Internet with a shared connection, and integration with your hardware firewall, which separates the outside Internet world and from your internal domain, the security of your data.

Servers are available now-a-days that can accommodate up to 15 users, which can easily be setup in a small office environment in just a couple of hours.  The price of such a server may surprise you.  A machine capable of handling a small office computing environment could run just over a thousand dollars; with a powerful processor, plenty of RAM, and redundant hard drives.  This machine would enable remote access for employees that needed to get to files on the server, it can run multi-user applications software, and perform as a rock solid file and print server.  The thing to note about this entry-level server, and the reason the price is so low, is that all the software licensing is included. 

In order to configure the server for remote access, we recommend two (as opposed to one) NIC cards (Network Interface Cards) be purchased with the server, and you must obtain a static IP address from your internet service provider (e.g., Verizon, Comcast, or other), and then setup a “DNS record” that lets the Internet find your server without you having to remember the IP address.  The good news is that an information worker can then connect to the network via the established VPN connection, and work from home with access to all of their network resources, as if they’re physically in the office.

The server, itself, can have its data backed up, over the Internet to an off-site location with a trusted provider.  The way this might work is that a local copy of all the data on your server is backed up onto a storage device that is dedicated to the purpose of off-site backup, and then moved off-site.  Again, the storage unit could be located in the business owner’s home, or the location of a trusted service provider.  The data de-duplication technology on these dedicated backup devices, now-a-days, is so powerful, that actual incremental file backups can be done periodically, over-the-Internet, with minimal bandwidth.  Individual files can be restored instantly, as required; or whole systems can be restored in the case of a disaster by bringing the remote backup storage device back on-site.  Such off-site backup services can not only be cost-justified based on the risk of losing everything in a disaster, but could also be considered a time-savings because they’re much more convenient and reliable than the old tape drive systems.

With a basic server operating system providing for the necessities, and remote access and backups addressed, you can begin to get creative.  First, I want to follow up on something I already mentioned.  If you have a networked environment with an e-mail server, you can log on to any machine, and your “Inbox” will follow you around.  Basically, your email, contacts, and calendar are on the server, and wherever you log on, you’ll get access to all of your data, including indications on the latest e-mails that you’re already read, etc.  A common problem with small businesses is that they use POP3 e-mail, which is basically Web-based e-mail provided by Internet Service Providers (ISP’s); large and small.  So, you have your e-mail account that you access via the Web, and you download some of the e-mail to your work computer, and some of the e-mail to your home computer.  Now, your e-mail is basically fragmented.  The same could happen with your Contacts and your Calendar items.  And, here, I want to be clear that the $1,000-server I specified earlier does not include the kind of e-mail server that will solve this problem.  There is however another answer for small businesses, though, that will allow you to have all the convenience of enterprise-class e-mail, for a low monthly per user fee.  Such a solution will allow you to have synchronized data access to e-mail, contacts, and calendar items; no matter which device you access it from, including mobile devices.  The service will also provide you with domain-name e-mail, if you don’t already have that, and will enable you to easily transition from a Yahoo, Comcast, or Verizon e-mail account to your new e-mail account by reliably forwarding all e-mails sent to your old e-mail account to your new e-mail account.

Now, back to the creative stuff.  I’m a little ADD myself, and a news junkie too.  And I used to spend a lot of time reading articles linked from my favorite Web site, Google News.  Whenever I opened my internet browser, I’d open up Google News, and there would be dozens of fascinating article headlines tempting me to click and read more.  These days, I find myself more productive; and I believe my clients find their employees to be more productive also, because now when they open their internet browsers, their home page is your company’s corporate intranet.  Even if you’re a small company, if you have a low-cost server like the one we’ve discussed today, you can actually force all of your domain users to have their home pages be your corporate intranet.  That means that before they read about the Eagles-Cowboys rematch, or any news – real or hyped-up gossip; they’re going to see their own overdue action items, your corporate pronouncements – in short – topics that should be grabbing their attention.  I’m not advising that you block Internet access to any particular web sites, but it’s nice to know you could – with the power to control internet access, and hundreds of other behaviors of any users / computers on your computer network.

The “corporate intranet scenario” is always a good conversation starter, but – beyond that – the out-of-the-box functionality of the server software we’ve discussed today provides for new ways of bringing efficiencies to how you manage your business processes, communicate, collaborate, and share information.  Consider the case of a customer proposal that’s being worked on by several team members in sales and marketing, with input from the design, engineering, or any other operational group.  Does it make sense for that one document – the proposal – to be passed around to multiple users, at the same time, allowing different users to make edits to the same document?  (Having fun yet, keeping track of the revisions?)  Because that’s not feasible, one lucky person usually gets stuck incorporating all the edits.  But what if a late change comes in, and your “editor” is not available?  You’d want to know with confidence which is the latest version of the document, access it, and make the necessary changes. 

Or, what if you find that you’ve taken a wrong tack, or just plain accidently deleted a whole section.  You’d like to revert back to the previous version, or it might be two versions prior that represents the last decent copy.  How would you like to be able to allow everyone who has input, to incorporate the edits they need to, but only one at a time, by having to check documents out to make changes, whereby nobody else will be able to make changes to the document until the live document is checked back in?  As with any great platform (think i-Pod), developers can build a thousand (or a million) “apps” that can run on this platform, and they have.  The platform is called SharePoint, it’s dedicated to business productivity, and you might be surprised to learn that if you already have a Windows Operating System, then you probably already have all the software licensing you need to get you started.

I’ve touched on six enterprise-class computer technology solutions for small businesses that can be purchased and deployed with minimal capital investment.  But please don’t forget my new No. 1 rule for 2010: “diagnose before you prescribe.”  And also, before I summarize the list, be aware that in certain cases, you can get access to these technologies on a trial basis, so you can try it before you buy it – always a good question to bring up to your computer technology partner.  In any case, here’s your list of ingredients to get started with enterprise-class information technology on a small-business budget:

· Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation (2-10 users)

· or Windows Small Business Server 2008 R2 (5-50 users)

· Remote access via VPN requires the server (obviously), two NIC cards on the server, a fixed IP address (from your Internet Service Provider, may add a few $ to your monthly internet access bill), and an “A record” (a DNS record that your ISP can also setup for you for free)

· Remote off-site backup; available in the form of a purchased dedicated device, or monthly service.

· Automatic “backing up” or synchronization of all working documents from PC/laptop to server; requires only that the folder in question be configured with “My Documents Redirection” (a.k.a., Offline Files).

· Having e-mail inbox “follow you around” is available, standard, with Windows Small Business Server 2008 R2, or available on a per user, per month fee (30-day trial available) with Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation.

· Having all domain-connected computers connect to your “corporate intranet” when they log on is configured on the server; and the “corporate intranet” itself is collaboration / document management software that can be installed on the server out-of-the-box.

I strongly believe you’ll be able to leverage these technologies not only to give you peace-of-mind regarding critical system reliability and data protection, but also to gain the boost in productivity that can help take you and your business to the next level.

All this; and I haven’t even mentioned what Windows 7 can do for you yet!

Ian

Ian G. Smith
SyncraTec Solutions, LLC

Enterprise-class information technology
on a small-business budget

267-266-5596 (cell)
215-310-1750 (office)

www.syncratec.com
ismith@syncratec.com

Hosted Exchange - Experience a Dramatic Productivity Boost
Windows Server 2008 Foundation - A Starter Server for Growth-Minded Businesses

Windows SBS 2008 Executive Briefing

On May 19th, 2009; SyncraTec Solutions, LLC will be hosting an Executive Briefing on Windows Small Business Server 2008 in Mt. Laurel, NJ.  We'll start at 1:00 p.m. with a boxed lunch and half-hour networking opportunity.  At 1:00 p.m., Jack Marino, of Sunhillo Corporation will present on how far they've come since the bad-old-days of slow-and-unreliable internet connections, lack of remote access, and lost e-mails; to a Windows Small Business Server environment that provides secure and reliable data connections, e-mail anywhere, and organized backup strategies.

On tap next, we have one of Microsoft's top technology speakers: Stephen Deming is an engaging speaker with outstanding breadth and depth of knowledge on an extended range of Microsoft products, and more importantly, how that technology can be put to use to help you get your work done more efficiently.

Running the anchor leg will by yours truly.  I'll be demonstrating Ten Things You Can Do Today with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.  Many organizations have Windows SharePoint Services, and may not even realize it.  If you have Windows Servers, you have the licensing you need to install WSS and begin using it today.  I'll show you how you can get started with this business application to help your company communicate and collaborate more effectively.

Again, lunch will be provided, and if you have any questions about what kind of technology would be most useful to help your company grow, this would be a great place to start.  Register Here.

Recovering Lost (or Maligned) Files with Previous Versions

If you work with files that are located in shared folders on your network, you may be able to access previous versions of your files. Accessing previous versions of your files is useful because you can:

• Recover files that were accidentally deleted. If you accidentally delete a file, you can open a previous version and copy it to a safe location.
• Recover from accidentally overwriting a file. If you accidentally overwrite a file, you can recover a previous version of the file.
• Compare versions of file while working. You can use previous versions when you want to check what has changed between two versions of a file.
• To access previous versions of files, your server administrator must enable Shadow Copies of Shared Folders on the file server. Shadow copies are copies of files that are located on the server and appear as previous versions. If you would like to have Shadow Copies of Shared Folders enabled, contact your administrator.

Notes:

For you to access previous versions of files, the shared files must be located on a computer running an operating system in the Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 family that has Shadow copies of Shared Folders enabled.  Previous versions are read-only.  You cannot make changes to a previous version of the file as it exists on the server.  Previous versions are periodically deleted and can disappear at any time.  If you think you might want a previous version of a file, it is recommended that you copy it to a safe place.